OUR VIEW: We'll survive without mail on Saturdays
By The Bakersfield Californian
Come this August, Americans may be dealing with the biggest change by the U.S. Postal Service in the past 63 years -- the suspension of Saturday mail delivery.
The Postal Service's recommendation must be approved by Congress, and there are indications that lawmakers may be divided on the issue. If it happens we'll miss Saturday delivery, but we won't miss it that much. Not when the struggling Postal Service can save a whopping $2 billion annually by scaling back delivery from six days a week to five. That's just a fraction of the estimated $20 billion the USPS must come up with in cost savings and new revenue, but it's a start.
Americans were likely bothered and dismayed in 1950 when the Postal Service suspended twice-a-day delivery, but everybody adjusted and life went on. It will be the same if Saturday delivery is suspended.
With more and more people paying bills and corresponding online, and more businesses doing their billing online, the Postal Service has been hemorrhaging badly. The current volume of post offices and postal workers exceeds the volume of mail necessary to process it.
Happily, the same technological game changer that has impacted letter delivery is helping the Postal Service remain profitable in another area. The explosion of consumers' online purchasing has kept package delivery busy -- up by 14 percent in the past three years -- so Saturday package delivery will likely not be affected.
Congress may have been surprised by Wednesday's announcement -- it came with little advance notice from the Postal Service -- but that shouldn't slow their response: Cut Saturday delivery and then start looking for other ways to right the ship. We'll adjust just fine.
Most CommentedMost Popular
He’s Dr. Merle Haggard now. The bad-boy hero of the rebel strain of music that put Bakersfield on America’s cultural map half a century ago did something Friday he hadn’t done since he was 9: He sat still in school.
The family of David Silva announced Friday it has filed its long-expected federal civil rights claims against the Kern County Sheriff’s Office, six sheriff’s deputies and a sergeant, two California Highway Patrol officers, the county and the state alleging excessive police force killed him.
SACRAMENTO -- The California High-Speed Rail Authority won approval Thursday from a federal railroad oversight board to start construction this summer on the first leg of what would be the nation's first bullet train.
The Panama-Buena Vista Union School District Tuesday night unanimously approved a contract of employment to hire Kevin Silberberg as its new superintendent.
A Bakersfield attorney’s rocky marriage, marked by a divorce suit and a history of loud, public arguments, reportedly erupted into violence early Wednesday morning when police say he turned a gun on his wife and fired.
A woman found dead in a southeast Bakersfield garage Tuesday was identified Friday as 18-year-old Mia Ramirez of Bakersfield.
After a search that lasted much of Tuesday afternoon, the Kern County Sheriff’s Office arrested a man on suspicion of homicide in connection with the discovery of a woman’s body in a southeast Bakersfield garage.
Bakersfield DUI attorney Mark Joseph Madrigali pleaded not guilty to three felonies in Kern County Superior Court Friday in connection with the shooting of his wife.